Photography and Serendipity

The guy at the photolab is funny because he always recognises me every time I stop by to drop some rolls of film for developing and he has stopped asking for my last name to write on the receipt and just writes it, but he always spells it wrong and a different way every time (the latest one being Bak instead of Beka). I’ve got to the point of not caring about the spelling. He doesn’t need my name when I’m picking up the negatives anyway. He knows which rolls are mine. I assume he doesn’t have too many customers who shoot medium format film.

I guess I haven’t mentioned here that I got some of my pictures of the city of Cambridge, Ontario used in a guide published by the Cambridge Tourism Board called Discover Cambridge. I even got a credit in the acknowledgment section along with my photography website address and they printed 200,000 copies of the guide. Can you say instant fame? ;) Well, not really, but still it was kind of cool. They found the pictures by way of Flickr, in case you’re wondering.

Speaking of Flickr, our last stop in our Wellington County photo tour this past Saturday was the city of Guelph. I had been bugging Troy to buy me ice cream all day and we finally stopped to buy ice cream from this place in Guelph called the Boathouse. When we got there, I saw a girl who looked like one of my Flickr contacts, but I wasn’t too sure. Turned out it was really her because when we bumped into her as we were leaving, she asked if I was me and I asked if she was her and we were both right! She said I was one of her favourite photographers on Flickr, which made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy. :) She was the second person to recognise me in real life through Flickr.

As if that wasn’t enough of a coincidence, we had friends in Guelph inviting us over for dinner that night and as we were hanging around in the kitchen, I saw a newspaper published by the University of Guelph laying on the table and guess who I saw in the front page photo? It was the girl, the Flickr contact I had bumped into earlier! Life can be very interesting sometimes, don’t you think?